Primary Construction
Sitemap Primary Construction * See Also Construction * See Also Rapture Construction Domes --- --- --- --- --- . . . . . . . . The Skyline of Rapture changed to be more realistic in height, and with the lighting toned down to reflect the very quick light absorption through water. Close up, a 12 story building still can look quite impressive (consider how squat just about every inside part of Rapture, we were in during the game, was). A good MMORPG illustration would be YOU (on a mission) having to traverse just 12 flights of stairs in some building, where the elevators don't work (very likely/typical), and someone (a NPC Lackey) comments "Good thing its not 60 stories". --- --- --- Ruling Factor About Rapture Construction : 600 feet deep = 280 lb/sq in external water pressure - greater than the steam pressure in most Steam Locomotive boilers. That's the magnitude of the water pressure pushing in on Rapture's buildings (which needs to be CONTINUOUSLY handled by the building's structure -- NO WEAK SPOTS ). --- --- --- A solid mass of concrete is far simpler than a very complex network of girders and a metal shell to hold that water out. It would have Far LESS maintenance being involved (potentially a constant drain on resources ...) Thus most of the main structures of Rapture has the Pressure Containment Shell being thick walls/ceilings/floors of reinforced concrete, with concrete floor plates to do the transverse transmission of the external water pressure-caused forces (and lots of 'fillets' to maximize the diagonally transmission/spreading of those immense forces into/across the interior of the building structure (Usually across to the opposite side of the building, using its countering force, and exploiting the inherent compressive strength of the material ). --- --- --- RAPTURE - City Construction Requires Lots of Infrastructure : All kinds of Temporary structures/rigging are required to facilitate the work : * The early 'Construction Domes' used for Rapture's initial construction. First large-scale test of sinking large prefabs into place and digging/cementing a foundation. Reused when Construction phase completed. * Remote Control systems for automated equipment - operator centers * Mike Mulligan Steam Shovel equivalents * Dump Trucks (rock is still heavy underwater) - variable buoyancy * Retaining Walls to stabilize the parts of the seabed (including when cutting the foudation volumes) * Equipment for maintenance/servicing of all of the above * Hoists and Derricks and Cranes - variable buoyancy lift * Drilling Rigs (for exploratory work to find conditions of seabed suitable for placing building) * Haulage of Construction Supplies, components, personnel * Diver Support (hard suits for the grunts) * Cement Mixing and transfer to work sites * Interior repair/maintenance space/facilities * Machinery recharging rigs for the self-contained units * Power Line to get power to temporary in place equipment * Worker/Staff Housing and Life Support (sewage/sanitary/sleeping/eating/drinking/recreation/health maintenance) * Local Project Coordination (versus tracking/coordination from the Mainland) * 'Pipelines' Transport (ex- pneumatic transport of powdered cement from surface transport). * Initial lines of the Atlantic Express used to haul from fixed marshaling areas and component assembly plants (ie- cement plant). Surface Facilities - Transport from 'Mainland' and transfer down to construction areas/stockpiles * Breakwater and Anchorage * Docks/cranes * Cargo Handling and Transfer Personel Facilities * Control and communications * Small Boat servicing * Bucket Tram down to Rapture (containerized freight) 600 feet difference made an AE type operation too long a track - impractical * Power Systems - fixed generating units to make power - originating up on Lighthouse Island diesel engines * Water desalinization plant (most required for cement) * Warehousing for cargo wating transfer below * Fuel Dump --- --- --- Rapture Phase 1 - Initial construction of the City beyond worker infrastructure. The Novel has some 'domes' placed early on the seabed floor to act as housing and bases for construction machinery. Building in the area of Welcome Center which would be some of the first facilities needed when large scale immigration started. Its proximity to the Lighthouse facilitated transfer of materials, supplies and personnel. It would be the first foothold of the normal building structure of the city. Air circulated from intakes at the Lighthouse site would provide until the permanent systems were in place (the Farms) Administrative Offices - operational coordination and control of construction Monsenor Hotel - Allowed worker residences to be moved from the Work Domes to a more normal environment. AE Station - link to the growing train system which greatly facilitated city construction. - Establishment of Neptune's Bounty, Port Rapture, Hephaestus], and connections of them to the transport network followed to provide the basic resource needs for further expansion. - . . . . . . . . . . --- --- --- Two Problem of Concrete : Shrinkage As It Sets, And Heat Buildup Causing Expansion : Large masses of concrete have an internal heat buildup problem from the chemical reaction of the setting cement. That heat can cause a great deal of structural defects in the material. The Concrete also shrinks as it solidifies. This shrinkage causes Tensile Stress that introduces defects (ie -large cracks) as a result. This stress happens especially when it is poured in large blocks. Hoover Dam, which WAS largely on big mass of Concrete, was built up (cast/poured) in cells to minimize extending shrinkage (the cracks between these cells were then systematically patched with 'grout', as the damn grew). The Dam Construction also had a system of small pipes systematically installed (in the blocks of concrete) through which cooling water was circulated for years after it was finished -- to alleviate the heat built up as the concrete slowly set. Pre-Fabrication on the Surface would assist in minimizing complications of this sort - much better control of the environment and methods of alleviating the problems of large chunks of Concrete for Rapture's buildings. --- --- --- Per The Empire State Building Example : It has a large central utility core within the building, with so many floors (even with its thin walls, and with less utilities than the buildings in Rapture require) which contains many elevators to access so many floors - within a reasonable time (capacity and average between-floors trip times - extra express elevators, etc..). That greatly cuts down the available interior space (even more as the building thins towards the top). Some of the buildings seen in Rapture's Ocean Views look to be about 60 floors (by window count), which even though being less than half of the Empire State Building floors, still is of a similar 'tall' situation. Only a few of Rapture's buildings might be anywhere near that tall (where you also have to worry about Rapture's depth and the clearance for any building's top being too NEAR the ocean surface -- which risks destruction by iceberg, as well as trying to anchor such a tall structure against ocean currents with so much leverage working against it.) --- --- --- Consider How Expensive Things Might Be - Like the Building of Rapture : Mass production can greatly lower costs both of manufacturing and installation and maintenance. Remember Ryan was an industrialist and he fully understood this concept and how to apply it. He also could employ his still-owned industrial organization on the Surface to use Surface-World efficiency to build/obtain components for Rapture (not just girders, but whole pre-made building sections and machinery). Example - Those vault-door-like pressure doors (ie- Securis Doors) would be very expensive, if only a few were custom built. Using industrial assembly-line techniques up there , with thousands produced (as there would have to be in Rapture), then the unit price drops considerably. Likewise for any special materials used en masse, which such components are made out of (like Titanium or Ryanium) - they could be obtained also at Surface economy-of-scale prices. Same goes for the machinery which sustains Rapture's terrestrial environment - built on the surface using Ryan's existing infrastructure. Inside Rapture cost of production was much higher - small production without much economy-of-scale (or complete lack of it), and hampered by lack of existing 'world-scale' material production methods/raw material supplies. Many common normally cheap materials thus would NOT be cheap IN Rapture, where such materials had to be found and transported in/down from the Surface (lots of overhead costs). This, of course, would also have been the years BEFORE the growth of ADAM (and other) technologies which might offer some in-Rapture cost-cutting improvements/new materials ( ?? or things later lost because of disruptions). --- --- --- ' "Reserved" ' : In all of Rapture's Construction there would be space within the solid structure reserved for later potentially needed/required expansion of utilities systems. Ryan (and/or people who worked for him) would definitely understand this concept as it is FAR more expensive to rebuild/retrofit such huge solid structures if a deficiency was later discovered. Rapture's Pneumo System may have been planned for (from the start when city was designed), and space reserved for it -- as it uses good sized 'tubes' (and the system's machinery) which would run throughout the city's utility infrastructure. --- --- --- --- --- . .